The Martian, Spoiled

Martian court

“I can’t believe they gave away the thingie in the rescue scene!”

By popular demand! Comments on this post will cover anything people want to say about the movie.

SPOILER WARNING!

And to fill up this post, JJ has contributed a set of links to trailers and interviews about The Martian.

Ares 3: The Right Stuff

Ares 3: Leave Your Mark

Ares 3: Our Greatest Adventure

Ares 3: Farewell

The Martian Teaser Trailer

The Martian: Bring Him Home

The Martian Official Trailer

ISS Crew Members Talk to Cast of The Martian (featuring Expedition 45 Commander Scott Kelly and Flight Engineer Kjell Lindgren, prior to the ISS premiere of the movie)

Andy Weir At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Adam Savage Interviews ‘The Martian’ Author Andy Weir

38 thoughts on “The Martian, Spoiled

  1. Is it too early to be Fifth?
    I’ll settle for First, sigh.
    Definitely going this weekend.

  2. And here are a couple more really interesting clips I watched last night:

    “The Martian” visits Johnson Space Center

  3. Journey to Mars, SDCC panel featuring:

    • Aditya Sood (Producer, The Martian)
    • Jim Green (Director of Planetary Science, NASA)
    • Todd May (Manager, NASA’s Space Launch System Program)
    • Victor Glover (Astronaut for NASA)
    • Andy Weir (author of The Martian)

  4. Oh, good. I’ll leave this tab open to come back to after the weekend, when I hope I’ll have had the chance to see it.

    ALMOST FIFTH!

  5. Saw it last night (for a change, Australia got something before y’all did!) Thought they did a good job: Damon was believable, the art direction was great, and I agreed with nearly all of their choices on what to retain from the book and what to cut. My only quibbles were that they changed my favorite line from the book and that they made one of the characters inappropriately goofy comic relief.

  6. JaniceG: My only quibbles were that they changed my favorite line from the book

    Which one?

    It’s been a year since I read the book. I grabbed it when it was $1.99 on Kindle. Now that I’ve seen the movie, I’ll have to read it again.

  7. JJ – My favorite line, which they changed, was the one right after they find out that Watney is alive, and they are musing about how that might affect someone psychologically and what he must be thinking.

  8. Loved this quote on Twitter: “Between Saving Private Ryan, Interstellar, and now The Martian, America has spent a lot of money trying to retrieve Matt Damon”

  9. Pingback: The Martian Cast & ISS Crew Chat – Co-Geeking

  10. @Janice G

    Have you seen the Right Stuff “trailer” in the original post? IIRC, the line you refer to is in that clip.

    Just watched it. Thought it was a really good adaptation, and had great pleasure in explaining to my co-watchers that they were actually a lot more merciful to Mark in the movie.

    Loved the Council of Elrond bit, especially the meta-ness of Sean Bean (who doesn’t die! Again!) explaining the reference. But seriously, who the frak wants to be Glorfindel as their first choice????

  11. snowcrash: Have you seen the Right Stuff “trailer” in the original post? IIRC, the line you refer to is in that clip.

    “The Right Stuff” trailer is the first video at the top of this page.

  12. @snowcrash – Thanks for the tip! Not quite as good without the context but nice to know they valued the line :->

  13. Just saw it – very well done. Hard to imagine that any fan of the book would be too disappointed (apart from the various additional tribulations MW gets in the book). Great cast, obligatory Bowie song as a break from the disco, witty and Mars looked great. And yes- Sean Bean explaing the council of Elrond is priceless.

  14. Wow. Saw The Martian yesterday afternoon. VERY well done. It’ll make my Hugo nomination list; I can’t imagine I’ll see six better films by the end of the year.

    Then I went home, and said, “what the heck, I’ve been meaning to watch this anyway” and put in Gravity, which I’d never yet seen. The contrast was amazing. (rot13 for Gravity spoilers.)

    V jnf vaibyhagnevyl oyhegvat bhg guvatf yvxr “gur VFF qbrfa’g funer na beovg jvgu gur Uhooyr fcnpr gryrfpbcr!” (Naq jnfa’g gurer n yvar nobhg vg gnxvat bhg 75% bs pbzzhavpngvbaf fngryyvgrf, juvpu ner va Pynexr beovgf ZHPU snegure bhg?) naq “jura lbh tb snfgre lbhe beovg tbrf uvture!” fb gurer pna bayl or bar cnff bs yrguny qroevf. Vg’f abg pbhagre-ebgngvat orpnhfr ABOBQL ynhapurf jrfg; lbh unir gb pbhagrenpg gur Rnegu’f ebgngvba engure guna trggvat n obbfg sebz vg. Fb fvapr vg’f abg pbhagre-beovgvat, vg’f fcvenyvat HC va eryngvba gb gur fuhggyr/VFF/rgp. Naq jura lbh’ir fanttrq fbzrbar ng gur raq bs n grgure, naq gurl’ir pbzr gb n eryngvir fgbc jvgu lbh, lbh unhy gurz va, be gurl unhy gurzfryirf va. GURER’F AB TENIVGL; abguvat vf chfuvat uvz njnl, abg rira pragevcrgny sbepr. Ubarfgyl, V’q rkcrpg n fcevatonpx, naq sbe uvz gb fgneg qevsgvat va jvgubhg uryc, orpnhfr bs zvabe fgergpuvarff va gur pnoyr. Snyyvat njnl vf Onq Fpvrapr.

    Ubarfgyl, V guvax gur bayl ernfba gb frr Tenivgl vf gb frr Fnaqen Ohyybpx va n jrg g-fuveg ng gur raq bs gur zbivr. Two hours I’ll never get back.

    And this turned from a positive review of The Martian to a rant about Gravity. Sorry ’bout that….

  15. That was pretty damn good. I was struck by the way they got right into the main story without messing around. Perhaps my favourite element was the trip to recover the old Pathfinder, because of the symbolism of retrieving one of the many items of technology we’ve hurled at Mars (ObXKCD).
    Although, I think there’s a slight error there because in the film he is seen following an parachute to find it, but in reality Pathfinder’s parachute released and it bounced down on airbags. (I may just be misremembering the movie, and it’s hardly the most egregious error anyway.)

  16. I knew ten minutes in I was going to like this movie. I knew when Watney stumbles back to the hab, and engages in all sorts of icky medical stuff (which I actually didn’t watch), and finishes off with a heartfelt “Fuck.” What he doesn’t do is ask where everybody is, get upset about it, or angsty. He works the problem.

    In a lot of ways, it’s the exact opposite of Gravity, which I genuinely didn’t like. It wasn’t just that the science was bad, although it was. It was that the characters are bad. You don’t get into space like that without being a bit of a jock and a bit of a geek. Or, actually, a lot of both. Bullock’s character makes no sense whatsoever. Also, how does a doctor come up with a deep-space thingy in her spare time? Oh, never mind. More bad science.

    My two favorite moments from The Martian were 1) “NASA, be advised, Rick Purnell is a steely eyed missile man,” which has to be the best possible way to declare mutiny, and the exchange between the satellite tech and the mission director where she says, “He’s asked us to call him Captain Blondebeard.” “Well, that makes sense, as Mars is technically –” “He’s already explained that.” All quotes are quasi-quotes. Best memory, and all that.

    There’s so much work and so little angst. I love love love it. Saw it Friday night with one of my boys, took the other local boyfriend and his girlfriend to it Saturday night. Currently plotting to see it a third time.

    Yes, there are infelicities. But those geeks, they’re real geeks.

    Also, I suspect part of the point of the Glorfindel remark is that Glorfindel is not in the movie. Which means that everyone there, with the exception of the PR flak, has read the books.

  17. I loved that, too — that Sean Bean was in on this Council of Elrond, too.

    from the book:

    “What the f— is ‘Project Elrond’?” Annie asked.
    “I had to make something up,” Venkat said.
    “So you came up with ‘Elrond’?” Annie pressed.
    “Because it’s a secret meeting?” Mitch guessed. “The email said I couldn’t even tell my assistant.”
    “I’ll explain everything once Teddy arrives.” Venkat said.
    “Why does ‘Elrond’ mean ‘secret meeting’?” Annie asked.
    “Are we going to make a momentous decision?” Bruce Ng asked.
    “Exactly,” Venkat said.
    “How did you know that?” Annie asked, getting annoyed.
    “Elrond,” Bruce said. “The Council of Elrond. From Lord of the Rings. It’s the meeting where they decide to destroy the One Ring.”

  18. I was really hoping for more widescreen Mars in The Martian. I think the 3D conversion fucked up a lot of shots in the 2D version, and I would seriously pay them to stop doing that. Charge extra for the 2D version before fucking it up with your 3D blurry bullshit, please.

  19. I just got back! It took a while for us to find a time to go, because one of the people who most wanted to go with us is working 2 jobs with long and variable hours.

    That was VERY good, I now am totally committed to going to Mars.*g*

    My biggest problem with the movie is going to sound really odd:

    Not enough CGI. They filmed the “Martian Landscape” scenes in Wadi Rum, which doubtless looks very alien and all that to many people, but to me just *screams* “flowing water and lots of it! Sedimentary rocks!”

    Whereas the *real* Martian landscape looks like this, with a very different combination of rock shapes.

    Not to mention that they didn’t even always CGI out the friggin’ *Moon*, which distracted the hell out of me. They could have CGIed-in Phobos and Deimos, too, but nooooooo.

    And then there’s my number-one bugaboo about movies/TV showing views of space: where’s the Galaxy? The Milky Way is *extremely* prominent if you look at an actual dark sky, but the only space fiction I can every recall showing anything like it is Babylon 5.

  20. Saw it yesterday, and am still happy.
    It is truly sweet to see something Not Screwed Up.
    I’m especially impressed with the book>movie decisions.
    They worked well for pacing and managed to leave out what they had to, but still not to change the flavor of things.
    It is, after all, a lot easier to follow someone sciencing in print.
    But they left enough traces for the feel of things.
    And they didn’t add a lot of crap (my fear going in).
    Definitely on my list.

  21. @Lauowolf

    I read the book through after watching it, and I was surprised at how well they’d adapted it. The “what to leave out” must have been tricky, but I can’t complain at any of the decisions. The second loss of contact would probably have felt odd for movie pacing, and while the sandstorm might have been visually spectacular, it requires that loss of contact to work on a dramatic level, so it had to go. I suppose the final scene where he gets to go Iron Man is a slightly silly decision, but I’m not surprised by it for a Hollywood movie – the hero has to save himself, after all.

    @Doctor Science

    I’m afraid my rock-fu is lacking – I see that the scenes are different, but I don’t know enough to know what the significant differences are?

  22. Mark: I read the book through after watching it, and I was surprised at how well they’d adapted it. The “what to leave out” must have been tricky, but I can’t complain at any of the decisions.

    I would agree. Yes, they made the role of the Hermes crew and NASA staff bigger in the movie than in the book. But I don’t think that they went overboard on it; I think that they did a good job of making the movie more of a “big story” piece rather than the “head piece” which was the book. I appreciate the character development. The book had precious little of that — which was fine for the book, but I liked that they gave the movie some character depth.

  23. A botany question on The Martian.

    Would flashfreezing (when the airlock blew) completely kill potatoes? They flash-freeze embryos; is there something different about the process that keeps them alive?

    And it struck me that although his farm bacteria were dead, he could start over with his own intestinal flora as before (although, granted, he’d have a much smaller quantity). So I’m wondering why it was completely impossible for him to start over, and at least extend his food supply by a small amount while working on getting ready to cross Mars.

    Please note, I know little to nothing about botany, so I expect there’s an obvious reason why the answer is “no”… but I’d appreciate an explanation.

  24. Notevenremotelyabotanist but I think it’s the expansion of water in the plant structure during freezing that causes physical damage to the plant. Speed of freezing could easily make a difference though.

    I’ve remembered something cut from the film that bemused me. In the book, when the airlock blows it lands intact and he walks/rolls it back to the hab. That would have been a really good physical scene for a movie, so I’m not sure why it was altered.

  25. Would flashfreezing (when the airlock blew) completely kill potatoes? They flash-freeze embryos; is there something different about the process that keeps them alive?

    One of those point where the film simplifies the crisis to the point that it should have been much less of a crisis. In the book he’s stuck in the airlock with a much more dramatically damaged suit and debilitating injuries for about three days. In the film he’s stuck there for about three minutes. While the sudden exposure might kill the leaves, I don’t think there was time to kill the bacteria.

  26. Mark:

    Here’s a shot from the movie. Here’s “Mt. Sharp” on Mars.

    The Martian landscape is mostly very rounded and gradual by comparison with Terra. It isn’t *carved*, the way hills in a Terran desert are carved — and that carving is done by *water*. You can see layers of wind-blown soil in the Mars picture, but not exposed stratigraphy of the kind of layers you get from marine deposits.

    They made an attempt to stages the scenes in areas with broken rocks, as are now familiar to us from pictures of the Martian surface, but Martian surface rocks are *much* less weathered. The movie still also shows wind-driven ripples in the sand, which isn’t present in pictures from Mars.

    And then there’s the fact that they didn’t even CGI out the plants …

  27. Let me try a version with only one link:
    Mark:

    The Martian landscape is mostly very rounded and gradual by comparison with Terra. It isn’t *carved*, the way hills in a Terran desert are carved — and that carving is done by *water*. You can see layers of wind-blown soil in the Mars picture, but not exposed stratigraphy of the kind of layers you get from marine deposits.

    They made an attempt to stages the scenes in areas with broken rocks, as are now familiar to us from pictures of the Martian surface, but Martian surface rocks are *much* less weathered. The movie still also shows wind-driven ripples in the sand, which isn’t present in pictures from Mars.

    And then there’s the fact that they didn’t even CGI out the plants

  28. @Doctor Science

    Thanks, I’ll have to look at the pics again and try to spot those points.

  29. @Doctor Science, you have a good eye. I didn’t notice the plants. I had to look hard at the photo you supplied to find them, and never would have seen them if you hadn’t pointed them out…

    Of course, here in 6484 Mars has been fully terraformed, and there are plenty of plants on Mars…

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